The John Taolo Gaetsewe District Municipality is in a process of compiling a district-wide stakeholder/ database register the objective being to have an all-inclusive stakeholder register that will assist the municipality to reach every sector of its community.

Various organizations, stakeholders, government departments, and private sector entities are invited to register on the register.

The register will be placed at the reception area of the municipality at 4 Federale Mynbou Street, Kuruman and will be closed on the 31st March 2016.

For more information please contact Mrs. Dineo Leserwane on 053 712 8711/ This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Unplanned action by some of the workers towards the end of Febru-ary 2016 saw them disrupting ser-vices to the communities and strewing gar-bage all over the Dr Harry Surtie regional hospital. The workers who belong to the majority union NEHAWU (National Education Health and Allied Workers Union) embark-ed on a protected strike to hand over a me-morandum to the acting CEO of the hospital Mr du Plessis on Wednesday 02 March 2016. The march to the hospital, supported by community members, was peaceful with NEHAWU supported by other affiliate mem-bers of COSATU.The Dr Harry Surtie hospital is the only re-gional hospital in the province and services the western half of the Northern Cape and receives referrals from as far as Springbok, Calvinia, Kakamas and even Postmasburg. This 326 bed hospital has however been plagued by disgruntlement from com-munities, feeling that the well-equipped hospital is not serving them better than the old Gordonia hospital. NEHAWU said that the memorandum and action was their “last effort to assist this flagship project to be steered into calm wa-ters”. The union leadership at the hospital said that they expect to receive feed-back from the hospital management and the department of health not later than 31 March 2016. Accepting the memorandum which was also addressed to the Head of the Depart-ment of Health, the office of the MEC of Health, the Office of the Premier and the ANC Regional Secretary, the acting CEO Mr du Plessis said that they thank the work-ers for a peaceful march and for engaging the hospital to raise their challenges. He said that the management of the hospital and the Department of Health will attend to the demands and will engage with the union leadership at the hospital at the appropriate time.

A group of local women visited China sometime in the last quarter of 2015 to exchange and tap agricultural experience from their fellow counterparts. In a briefing session held at Ga-Segon-yana banquet hall on February 24, 2016 intended to benefit local women farmers, Ipeleng Makae, Segametsi Marwane and Gladys Maluleke were chosen by the Department of Rural, Environment and Agricultural Development for the trip under the Public Financing of Agriculture project. The program is in its second phase aimed at stimulating public investment in agricul-ture. Women in the smallholder farming activi-ties in Africa have joined hands to explore ways to ameliorate food production. This is done by advocating for funding and en-abling legislation by individual countries to let women have a share in land ownership and investment. Having proven their entrepreneurial ef-forts, the three ladies, at different intervals, travelled within Africa and China respectively, in an endeavour to find ways to reduce pover-ty in the country. Ipeleng experienced a lot of good things that South Africans, especially ladies in the agricultural sector could learn from the most populous country in the world. She said that despite China's big population, poverty was not a common feature as in South Africa. She attributed this to a myriad of factors. According to her short exposure to the Chinese farming community, agriculture is done in totality where planting, harvesting, and processing are done at the same spot. This included packaging products ready for the market.The other important aspect that ought to be a lesson to the local entrepreneurs, is to embrace the new entrants from planting to the marketing point - a tradition that South African farmers ought to adopt. Ipeleng advised South Africans to copy the good practices that Chinese do to pro-mote the agricultural sector.

The illegal settlement of Promised Land (Thuli Madonsela section) in Kuruman is in leadership squabble. On March 12, 2016 the smouldering ten-sions came to the surface when two groups nearly set up a stage similar to that of John Cena versus Sean Michaels, but the timely intervention of the police rescued the situ-ation. The man behind the establishment of the biggest unlawful settlement in Kuruman, John Bull, has been allegedly side-lined by an emerging young man by the name of Patrick Masilo, when it comes to the alloca-tion of stands at the informal settlement. Mr Masilo had established his own work-ing committee that allocates stands and looks into the community challenges on a day to day basis. Mr Bull and his long stand-ing committee that has been doing the same over the years, felt that Mr Masilo was misguided and trespassing his line of authority. In an interview with Mr Masilo, he said that the community is no longer in favour of Mr Bull, owing to a number of reasons that were making fellow settlers unhappy. Strong allegations are that Mr John Bull is no longer paying attention to the needs of the people. The settlement has water chal-lenges and many other associated with un-systematic land invasion for human habi-tation. He further alleged that people dis-sociated themselves from Mr Bull, because he was reallocating stands if not fully erect-ed in three-four months. This did not go down well with the majority of occupants. Hence Mr Masilo thought he had the man-date to mobilise the same community, con-vinced it to establish another committee and therefore distance themselves from the John Bull leadership. In another interview with Mr John Bull, he said that Mr Masilo does not know how the informal sector came into existence and therefore must not mislead the community on the pretext of being holier than thou. It later emerged that the whole hullaballoo revolves around political patronage where the significance of numbers by individual parties is greatly aimed at ward 13, which is Wrenchville where Promised Land falls under. A meeting between the two camps has been set to balance the scales.